ASSAR's work in Ghana

West Africa’s semi-arid regions are home to an incredibly rich history of cultures that have thrived despite highly demanding environmental conditions. Today, people living in these dryland areas face a suite of complex challenges. These are related to increasingly erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, droughts, poor soil fertility, and floods, combined with high population growth, gender inequalities, ineffective decentralisation of governance, and reliance on climate-dependent livelihoods.

From 2014-2018, ASSAR’s Ghana team worked in the Lawra and Nandom districts of Ghana’s Upper West region to better understand how these interlinked challenges are impacting people’s capacity to adapt. Our team comprised researchers and technical officers from the University of Ghana’s Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS) along with master’s and PhD students from IESS and other university programs. We worked with partners and stakeholders from national to household levels to understand differentiated vulnerabilities, identify barriers to adaptation, and explore what needs to happen to support more effective, sustained, and widespread adaptation.

Intersecting climatic and non-climatic challenges manifest in varied ways for different groups and individuals. Therefore, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners should view these combined stressors holistically and use this more complete understanding when making decisions that will impact livelihoods and adaptation options of different social groups.

Measures can be taken now to ameliorate non-climatic challenges and bolster adaptive capacities. These include developing market support services, expansion of veterinary services, enforcement of regulations on bush burning, and better grading and packaging of produce.

Policy makers, government ministries, and practitioners should tailor water management to the needs of different social groups, prioritise provision of accurate and timely rainfall information, and strengthen technical capacities for maintaining water infrastructure. Further, to increase uptake among farmers, measures need to be taken to integrate traditional irrigation approaches that are culturally accepted with more modern mechanised approaches and financing.

Migration is often seen, in an overly simplistic manner, as a favourable adaptation response to combined stressors, but this is not necessarily the case. Migration is not always an available or desirable option. A focus should be placed on supporting sustainable adaptation options for those for whom migration is not a viable option.

Traditional patriarchal norms have favoured males and promoted structural inequalities among females in terms of decision making, access to and control over land for agricultural activities, and the ability to engage in more productive livelihoods. Recognising gendered dimensions of land tenure, and improving access and ownership rights for women and marginalised groups, is central to identifying successful adaptation strategies for the future.